Frozen II on track to ice competition with Disney record $100M opening weekend

Frozen II is Disney's much-anticipated follow-up to one of the highest-grossing animated movies ever, so we expected it to do well at the box office next month. Now we're starting to see early projections of just how well the film will do, and it's looking like the Frozen sequel will set a record for Disney animation.

Deadline reports that Frozen II is on track to gross north of $100 million in its opening weekend, topping the already massive opening box office of the first film, which hit $93.5 million across the five-day Thanksgiving weekend back in 2013. Frozen II opens the weekend before Thanksgiving, which gives it only three days to do what Frozen couldn't do in five, but the film's buzz is so strong that doesn't look like it'll be a problem. 

If this tracking holds true, Frozen II will have the biggest opening weekend ever for an animated film that didn't release in the summer blockbuster window (Incredibles II, which dropped in June 2018, hit $182 million in its opening weekend), though it will still trail behind live-action juggernauts like The Hunger Games: Catching Fire and its $158 million November opening. Frozen II also stands to crack another record, though. If tracking holds, it will earn the biggest opening weekend ever for Walt Disney Animation Studios, a title currently held by Zootopia and its $75.1 million, according to Variety.

Perhaps the biggest thing to keep in mind here is that despite the lofty predictions, this is still early tracking, and both Variety and Deadline's reporting suggests these numbers could climb even higher in the coming weeks. Disney still has three weeks to roll out the marketing red carpet for Frozen II as the post-Halloween holiday spending and advertising begins to ramp up. That means an even bigger push for advance ticket sales, and that means the potential is there for the Frozen sequel to just keep freezing out the competition. 

Frozen displayed serious staying power after a successful opening weekend in November 2013 and went on to gross $1.3 billion, making it the biggest animated film of all time until it was eclipsed by this year's photorealistically animated remake of The Lion King. The sequel reunites original cast members Idina Menzel, Kristen Bell, Josh Gad, and Jonathan Groff, and hopes to expand the Frozen mythos in big ways. Can Frozen II top Frozen's all-time box office haul? We'll find out soon enough. The film opens November 22.